Absence
by anime ace 12
Summary: Oneshot for now very slight Tenten x Neji Tenten hasn't been showing up for training lately, and Neji sets out to find her...


Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

A/N: Here we go again…let's see if this one is any better.

**Absence**

**By,**

**Anime Ace**

**Pairings: Neji x Tenten**

Neji sighed for what was about the third time in one minute. He couldn't take it anymore; he needed to get out of there, and fast. They were driving him insane and he couldn't take it anymore. This was why he only trained with her, because of these two. And when she didn't show up for some unexplained reason, he was the one who had to deal with their madness.

"Where is our beautiful flower?"

"I wonder if anything is wrong with her."

"Gai, what do we do?"

"I do not know Lee."

The two 'complete and totally clueless idiots' as Neji had named them had been doing this for the last fifteen minutes and it was beginning to get on his nerves. That was an understatement; he was going to kill them soon. And it was all her fault, for not showing up in the first place. She should have known better than to be late, and leave him alone with these two. Either she would come to find those two dead, or find he had strangled himself.

'Where the hell could she be?' he thought as he tried to block his other two teammates out of his mind. 'I mean she is never late. Never! And why did she have to pick today of all days to be late? I am going to die! No, correction she is going to die for making me live through this.'

"Gai, where do you think Tenten is?"

"I do not know Lee, but I am sure our beautiful flower is just fine."

"Yes, but what do we do?"

"I don't know Lee."

"I. Will. Go. Find. Her!" Neji shouted at the two, and began to walk away. 'At least I will get away from those two, and I will find out what would be so important for Tenten to skip training and leave me for insanity.'

"I wonder what is wrong with him," Lee said looking up at his role model.

"I do not know Lee," Gai said and the two proceeded in their training. They knew that Neji would do what he said, he always did, and where Tenten was concerned Neji tried extra hard. He didn't notice it himself, but they did.

Neji was glaring at every living thing in his path, and as a result everything living was giving him a wide radius. Neji had checked her house, all of her friend's houses, all of the stores, restaurants, and parks. In short he had looked all over the god dang city and he couldn't find her. He had asked Ino, Hinata, and Sakura if they had seen her, and they didn't know. She had just disappeared.

'I am so going to give her a piece of my mind when I find her. Why would she skip training? Why am I doing this? I should just go home and forget about her and wherever she is. I can't believe I am going through all of this trouble for some girl who doesn't even bother to show up to training.' He thought and started off towards his home. He was in a bad mood and when straight to his room, slamming the door shut and locking it. Nobody saw him until the morning.

At training the next day Tenten did not show up again, and Lee and Gai's worry grew making Neji want to strangle them both.

"Neji, I thought you said you were going to find her," Gai said turning towards the one teammate who didn't seem to care about their precious 'flower'.

"I tried looking for her, couldn't find her," he said flatly, venom dripping into his voice. He was even more angry at the bun haired girl when she hadn't shown up today at practice. 'Where the hell is she?' he thought and his mood turned darker. All he could picture was strangling his teammates to pay for their incompetence.

If Lee and Gai noticed Neji's killing mood, they didn't let it affect their moods. They continued to list completely unbelievable things that could have kept Tenten from training for two days in a row. That was until Gai got an idea to try and find her.

And now, Neji was walking through the town again, trying to find his teammate. He had a list of buildings that he was suppose to go to in attempt to find his teammate. He had already visited a lot of them on the list and he was walking towards his next destination: the hospital.

No one seemed to cross his path as he walked, they could probably feel the killing aura that surrounded him, and had taken great lengths to stay out of his way. Neji was actually quite happy, in an evil sinister kind of way. He was finally going to find his teammate and get some answers to why she had left him to die by the hands of green spandex clad buffoons.

Gai's plan had seemed pretty reasonable and well thought out, they each got a list of buildings in the city to go and look for her in. Lee and Gai were handling the houses, while Neji had the rest of the buildings. Neji was happy with it, and he got to get away from his other two teammates.

When he arrived at the hospital, people began to shiver and stutter when they talked. Anger was rolling off of him in waves, and the nurse at the front desk, who he was currently approaching, was trying to find a place to run to.

"Um…can I help you?" she asked, trying to get him to go away as soon as possible.

"Yes, do you know where I might find Tenten?" he asked politely, and in such a tone that almost made her scream. Neji sure could scare people when he was mad, and he was not one to come across when he was looking for revenge.

"Y-yes. S-she is in r-r-room 204," the nurse said.

Neji quickly left and headed straight for the room. He knew where it was from previous visits to the hospital. He had an evil smirk on his face, and his hands twitched in anticipation. He was finally going to find his good-for-nothing bun haired teammate. And he was going to let her experience his full wrath. At least, he would verbally attack her, and then in training which she would be attending the next day, she would have the time of her life trying to fight for her life.

Neji was a few feet from the slightly ajar door. With his hearing he could hear slight snoring, and deep breathing. It seemed that there were two people in the room, and both were asleep.

He reached over and quietly pushed open the door. Neji found Tenten sitting in a chair with her head and arms lying on the bed next to her sound asleep. What he failed to see were the tear trails that ran down her cheeks. On the bed was a girl who looked to be around seven or eight years old, also sleeping. She had that sickly look to her face, and she looked weak and frail.

That was not shocked Neji though, it was the resemblance between the two girls. They were exactly the same to each individual hair. She was a miniature Tenten, complete with matching buns.

'So this was why she missed training. It had better be an important sickness, for her to miss two days,' he thought. His pent up anger began to dissipate when he looked at the two girls, and he turned back to the hallway.

"Nurse?" he called.

One approached him cautiously, his aura still had traces of anger and death in it, and she did not want to be on the receiving end.

"Yes sir?" she asked.

"Could you please tell me what is wrong with the girl in room 204?"

"Oh yes, very sad case. She has leukemia, and we can not do anything for her. She will be gone in a couple of days. Her sister, I believe, has been here since yesterday. She had wanted to come earlier, but training kept her away during the day, and so she came at night. But when we learned that there was nothing we could do, she hasn't left her sister's side. It is a very unfortunate case, both of them are orphans and the only one left in the world for each other," she said, and turned to go help another patient.

Neji walked back into the room, and picked up a blanket that was folded on the end of the bed. He draped it over Tenten's shoulders, and noticed she had a tight grip on her sister's hand. He also noted the slight red puffiness of her eyes.

'She has been crying. I can't believe I was so angry with her. Tenten has always had a good reason to skip training, and this is definitely a good one. Maybe…maybe I just missed her,' Neji thought and then kicked himself. 'No…it was because I had to be with those two green idiots. But, I shouldn't be mad at her. This is not her fault, and she deserves to be here. Tenten is probably not going to be the same after this.' With a sad smile on his lips, Neji left the two in silence.

A couple of days later, Tenten had still not appeared at training. Neji hadn't told Lee and Gai what he had found out, except that she was ok and would hopefully be back to training in a week or so.

The next day they all received invitations to a funeral, to someone who they had no clue to their identity. Neji had a pretty good idea, and convinced the other two to attend. When they arrived they found a very small group of people, consisting mainly of the rookie nine, and their sensei's. Also Tsunade, and…Tenten.

Tenten was wearing a black dress, and she looked very cold. Her hair was down and in clips. She was just staring at a grave marker beside her, with her hands clenched.

The ceremony went by, and people left. Until only Neji and Tenten were left. She didn't look like she was going to leave anytime soon, and he was going to make sure at least she got home safely.

She hadn't talked to anyone; she had just kept her eyes on that one grave marker, as if she could bring the person back to life, her sister back to life. But Neji and Tenten both knew that she couldn't, and Neji was going to try and help Tenten to get through this.

After seeing Tenten with her sister a few days earlier, he had felt guilty. She hadn't been spending time with her sister because of him and training, and then he had gotten angry at her when she hadn't shown up. All because she was spending time with her sister who was going to die. He was being selfish, when she was going to lose the most important thing to her. Her only family left in the world.

And then he had decided he was going to do everything he could to help her after. He knew what it was like to lose someone very important to you, and he didn't want Tenten to turn into someone cold, like him.

"Why Neji?" she asked. He could tell she was trying super hard to not let her tears flow freely.

"Why did it have to be her? She didn't deserve it, she didn't deserve to die! She was only eight years old! She was too young to die! She didn't deserve to die! Why couldn't…why couldn't it have been me instead? Why couldn't I have done something? It's my entire fault that she is dead. I should have been able to do something to save her. Why couldn't I have saved her?" Tenten yelled and the tears started falling. Her resolve had been lost.

"Tenten, it was not your fault she died. You had no control over it," Neji said softly, walking towards her.

"It was my fault! Her death was my fault! I couldn't stop it Neji! It is my fault!" she screamed at him, shaking her head.

"No, Tenten it is not. You know that. You sister would want you to be happy, not blame yourself for her death. Tenten you have to live for her…because she can not. That is what she would want, for you to be happy, and that is the only thing you can do for her," Neji said and wrapped his arms around her.

She tried to struggle against him, but soon wrapped her arms around him and started sobbing into his chest. When she started to fall from exhaustion, he picked her up bridal style, and walked to his house.

"Tenten everything will be ok. You can come and stay with me as long as you want ok. I will be here for you," Neji whispered to her, and she nodded in understanding.

"Thank you Neji. I think I would appreciate that," she said and yawned, snuggling closer into his chest and falling asleep.

Neji knew that even though Tenten seemed calm now, she was long from recovering from her sister's death. But he planned on being there for her, helping her through it.

'Funny, I thought that she was a problem. I guess I was right, although I don't think I mind very much.'

AN: Ok I am done. I don't think this one is very good. Oh well, the characters were very OOC, and the plot wasn't very well thought through. Sigh I try though. Please review and tell me what to work on.


End file.
